RamSan SSDs From Texas Memory Grew 20% in 2008

Texas Memory Systems announced that revenue from sales of its RamSan line of solid state disk (SSD) products grew 20% in 2008. The company also recorded record fourth quarter sales. Texas Memory Systems is the leading supplier of solid state systems for accelerating essential enterprise applications. Based in Houston, Texas the firm is privately owned with no venture capital backing or long term debt. Founded in 1978, the company celebrated its 30th year in 2008.
 
In 2008, Texas Memory Systems was able to capitalise on increasing demand for solid state disks and the falling price of materials by delivering innovative new products. During the year Texas Memory Systems expanded into new global markets. It continued to ship the award winning RamSan-500 – the fastest available Flash memory-based solid state disk. It also delivered the new RamSan-440 – the first RAM-based disk capable of a groundbreaking speed of 600,000 I/Os per second. By year-end Texas Memory Systems delivered the RamSan-5000 – the first scalable 1-million I/O per second Flash-based solid state system to go beyond the lab into the marketplace.
 
“We feared the global financial crisis and increasing competition would have a bigger impact on our 2008 results,” said Woody Hutsell, Executive Vice President at Texas Memory Systems. “However, our solid state disks are often used in mission-critical applications and in such applications customers value Texas Memory Systems’ engineering experience and 30-year longevity. Savvy IT managers will always be reluctant to put their critical data on a first generation product, whether it comes from a Fortune 500 company or a venture-funded start-up.”
 
Texas Memory Systems’ enterprise-class solid state disks are used by businesses, government, research and military organisations worldwide to accelerate their most critical applications. Faster systems can support more transactions and users with fewer servers and licenses, while consuming less power. As such they are more cost effective than adding large hard-disk based systems, new servers, server-based RAM, or extensive application tuning.
 
“For Texas Memory Systems, with over 30 years of experience and 13 generations of SSD products, delivering on the promise of SSDs is nothing new,” noted Jeff Janukowicz of market analyst firm IDC in a recent profile of the company. He sees challenges ahead, but also new avenues with potential for further growth and expansion. “The industry is on the cusp of a tangible growth in cloud computing and storage. This segment of the industry has the potential to be very I/O intense, and companies providing cloud services should be looking at vendors like Texas Memory Systems, that offer very high performance storage systems.”
 
“We are cautiously optimistic about 2009,” continued Hutsell. “Solid state disks are an important part of modern telecommunications systems, financial exchanges, national defence systems and ‘green IT’ initiatives which are likely to benefit from new government investment. Additionally, a solid state disk can cost-effectively extend the life of existing IT infrastructure allowing cash-strapped IT managers to postpone major purchases.”